By ACNS staff
The President of the Episcopal Church’s lay and clergy House of Deputies has spoken out against laws in parts of Africa that she said, "are brutally repressive to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people."
In a comment piece for Religion News Service, The Revd Gay Clark Jennings - who is also a member of the Anglican Consultative Council - pulled no punches as she also reflected on the Church’s role in the current situation facing parts of Africa.
"In the last month, many Westerners watched in horror as Uganda, and then Nigeria, enacted laws that are brutally repressive to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people," she wrote.
"The fate of a bill passed by the Ugandan parliament remains uncertain after President Yoweri Museveni refused to sign it, but news reports from Nigeria indicate that there have been mass arrests of gay men following President Goodluck Jonathan’s signing of the National Assembly’s anti-gay bill.
"World leaders, including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, have expressed their dismay. Many Christian leaders around the world, regrettably, have been largely unwilling to criticize Christian leaders in Africa who cheered the passage of these punitive laws.
"The Anglican primates of Uganda and Nigeria enthusiastically support anti-gay legislation in their countries. I, like them, am a member of the Anglican Communion, a worldwide body of more than 80 million Christians. I am troubled and saddened that fellow Anglicans could support legislation that fails to recognise that every human being is created in the image of God."
The Revd Jennings proposed that negative attitudes towards members of the LGBT community in countries like Nigeria were largely due to "the legacy of colonial-era Christian missionaries and infusions of cash from modern-day American conservatives" which "have bankrolled homophobia on both sides of the Atlantic and helped make common cause between right-wing American Anglican splinter groups and the Anglican churches of Nigeria and Uganda".
In particular she said it was the legacy of biblical literalism brought to the African continent by Western Missionaries in the 19th and early 20th centuries which, "continues to encourage fundamentalist interpretation of difficult passages like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah."
She added, "Christians [in parts of Africa such as Nigeria and Uganda] who publicly advocate for more historically accurate biblical interpretations and more generous treatment of LGBT people can find themselves jobless, homeless and in grave danger."
The Revd Jennings stressed that the situation was "not hopeless" and that "contextual Bible study, could provide Christians in Africa new ways to read the Bible" and to reconsider "what it has to say about sexuality and other central issues in the lives of African Christians."
She concluded by calling for Christians in the West to speak out against human rights abuses and "acknowledge with humility that we bear our share of the responsibility for this tragic legacy of empire and insist on repudiating contemporary efforts to expand its reach."
Read the full comment piece by The Revd Gay Clark Jennings at http://www.religionnews.com/2014/01/27/commentary-churchs-role-homophobia-across-africa/
[Editor's note: To read about the Anglican Communion's statements on the issue of victimisation of members of the LGBT community visit http://www.dontthrowstones.info/]